[slushh]

>The flip side of all that energy and intelligence - the sadness, melancholia and loss of self during a down phase.

On that other side, the positive side, is there a self?

>Another feature about this guy is his low threshold of boredom. He'll pick up on a task and work frantically at it, accomplishing wonders in a short time and then get bored and drop it before its properly finished.

Working frantically at a task doesn't sound like self-realization.

[kdmccormick]

Well, sometimes working frantically does get us bipolar folks somewhere, for example:

* To a place where other people see the value and join into the project before we burn out.

* To a place where a discovery or insight is made that is valuable without needing to be thoroughly polished. IMHO this is why so many brilliant mathemeticians are bipolar: once an insight is reached and communicated, value has been created. No debugging or security updates required :)